D-Link Boxee Box - Box Office Hit Or Flop?
Will D-Link's flagship entertainment hub break out of the box or crumble in shame? HardwareZone dives in to find out if this HDTV companion is worth its multimedia chops.
The Cube Has Landed
D-Link created quite a stir in the AV scene when they first hinted at developing a media box two years ago. If you recall, initial rumors about the Boxee's hardware centered mainly on NVIDIA's Tegra 2 during the early stages. In a Shyamalan-like twist, it was soon made clear during the US launch that D-Link has ditched NVIDIA for instead. If you are wondering, the 1.2GHz CE4100 also happens to be the same "Sodaville" SoC (system-on-chip) with a 1080p video engine powering the Android-flavored Google TV. Why the sudden change of guard, you might ask? According to D-Link, Intel's workhorse was chosen over NVIDIA's Tegra 2 SoC due to the Atom's ability to decode high-profile H.264 formats. The plot thickens though, for NVIDIA has since updated their Tegra 2 page with 1080p H.264 encoding and decoding support.
D-Link's much anticipated Boxee has been compared to the likes of Google TV and Apple TV. While we can't be sure of the number of streaming venues available till we test drive this thing (more on that later in the article), we do know that D-Link has at the very least established a head start over its competitors in this region.
More recently, local AV punters were able to grab the Boxee when it was eventually launched at the . The question is - can D-Link's multimedia solution prove itself against the maddening crowd of media players in the market? At S$329, it is priced marginally higher than most mid-range breeds of media tanks. Meaning, D-Link will have to convince consumers that its media center solution is capable of streaming as well as unifying Internet content, apart from its ability to provide extensive video support and seamless playback. With the rising threat of Internet-enabled TVs, the Boxee is undoubtedly facing an intense blaze of competition; not just from the ranks of rival media players, but against the waxing wave of new-age HDTV displays which Sony, Samsung and LG are guilty of as well.
Join us as we uncover the Boxee's strengths and weaknesses over the following pages.
Boxee Unboxed
If it isn't obvious by now, the Boxee with its shaved base appears very much like a semi-submerged cube. Clad in black with a glossy front, D-Link's unconventional design has turned this media hub almost into a reluctant art form. Designed by Astro Studios, some naysayers have also bemoaned that the Boxee isn't stackable due to its odd shape. To that we'd say - who would stack another AV component on top of a typical small media player? Musings aside, the Boxee shouldn't occupy too much decl space with its compact 115 by 115 mm form factor. The concave power button is conveniently placed on top of the unit, but can be hard to reach if the box is placed in tighter confines.
D-Link's media cube might require an acquired taste to appreciate its peculiar design, but it's hard to say no to the pretty green Boxee logo which comes on like a specter when the unit is powered on. Like it or not, this thing will sit pretty on your AV deck.
There are no labels to accompany this beveled button, and neither was the very brief accompanying installation guide of any use. Thanks to our quick thinking, it took us about two seconds to figure out this was indeed the power button.
Connectivity wise, it is apparent D-Link is out to woo the digital crowd on the whole. Among them are LAN, HDMI (v1.3) and optical audio ports plus two USB 2.0 slots. The only trace of an analog outlet would be its pair of stereo RCA jacks. Being so, owners of archaic tellies with limited composite or component inputs will have to give the Boxee a miss. Since most of the ports are located behind, ensure there's sufficient space for your hands to access the rear panel when the unit is mounted. By its side sits a SD/MMC slot which supports SDHC cards up to 32GB in capacity. One sweet perk, however, is the Boxee's built-in 802.11n wireless feature.
Besides the obvious AV ports shown here, you might want to know that the LAN slot is only 10/100Mbps capable. While a Gigaport is clearly lacking, we have to give the Boxee deserved brownie points for its built-in Wi-Fi which some media players lack, like the WD TV Live for example.
The memory card slot found on the Boxee is only able to digest SD and SDHC cards of up to 32GB in capacity. Well, it's better to have one than none yeah?
As for its remote, the two-sided wand might seem like a trendy and functional piece of hardware at first sight. It includes a D-pad with basic controls on one side and a set of QWERTY keys on the other. Truth is, we have a tendency to press the buttons on the flip side when punching the text buttons. To add, managing the on-screen cursor is also a tad tricky with the directional pad. It should have acted more like a wand like in , but that will significantly push up the cost of the product. More on the remote stick's usability when we tackle the Boxee's applications over at the next page.
It is obvious D-Link is favoring a minimalist approach for their remote's design. The sleek wand features three main controls - play/pause button, four-way directional pad, and menu button. The latter also functions as a back-key which returns you to the previous page, depending on which screen you are at.
A complete QWERTY keypad is seated on the remote's flip side. Numeric keys can be engaged by holding the ALT key. Although D-Link's intention is laudable, the dual-faced implementation will require some work since we have a tendency of hitting the QWERTY keys when utilizing controls on the other face.
Boxee's Softer Side
Prepping The Box
Be prepared to run through the software setup before you have the Boxee up and running. First up, the Linux-based application requires you to establish an Internet connection (either via LAN or WLAN) and to patch its current software. The unit will reboot itself upon completing the update. Following which, the program would prompt for you to align the display to suit the HDTV's resolution and aspect ratio. As a side note, if you don't already have a Boxee account, we'd recommend creating one at www.boxee.tv since a user account is mandatory. Upon logging in, you'll see a Quick Tip screen which talks about the use of the Menu button and how it can be used as a "back" key. The Boxee is more or less ready to rock at this point, unless you have further tweaks to make to its configuration.
Boxee's sign-up process is divided into four steps. Mainly, you'll need to choose your platform (we chose Boxee), key in your credentials, add video services if you want to, and you're almost done. After which, access your email to validate your new account and it's all good to go.
Boxee's User Interface
The Boxee required 35 plodding seconds to boot up, and we wonder if it might have fared better without the redundant animated display. We found six primary icons on its home page, and most of them were designed to manage your streaming media or apps, such as the "Watch Later" application which stores queued video titles. In most ways, the Boxee also acts as a social media tool, like the "Friends" application, for example, which allows you to track your online peers' videos. Similarly, you can also view shared Facebook or Twitter videos from the same platform. To enable this, you'll need to log in to your account and activate this feature found under "Services". To manage files, note that the Boxee lacks internal storage, so you'll have to rely either on your own external drive or exploit its equipped SD slot. Speaking of which, the "Files" icon on the home page also enables you to access files and folders on local and networked mediums. However, it does not allow you to copy files from one storage media to another - a handy function that we sorely miss.
The Boxee took 35 seconds to reach its splash screen. Compared to media players without internal storage such as the ASUS O!Play Air HDP-R3 HD which nailed it in 6 seconds, D-Link's Boxee can very much be considered as a plodding snail in the boot-up race.
The home page features six primary applications. While the icons are easy to discern, getting to your desired destination on the Boxee will require a number of clicks on the remote. On the bright side, the overall interface is pretty streamlined with concise sub-menus.
While the home page layout is clean and simple, we think a dedicated settings icon would have further enhanced the Boxee's user experience. To reach the Boxee's settings, you'll have to hit the Menu button on the remote and select the icon (top left) on the secondary screen.
You may use D-Link's integrated Webkit-based browser to configure your Boxee account settings. Usable services include Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz and MUBI. Don't bother with Netflix if you are attempting to sign in from Singapore, not unless you are willing to subscribe to a VPN service.
As you might have guessed, TV programmes are amassed under the "Shows" tab and films under the "Movies" tab. Generally, local Boxee users have much to gripe about when it comes to media streaming. While our American counterparts get to enjoy comprehensive VOD (Video On Demand) movies coverage from Netflix and Vudu (Hulu's still pending), Singaporeans are stuck with skimpy ones such as MUBI and OpenFilm. Trouble is, movies offered by these hosting sites are mostly limited to foreign art cinema, classic or indie films. You'll need to pay to view MUBI's content, while those we browsed on OpenFilm are mostly free. As a borderline perk, most "TV programmes" are available for free from the various portals. Don't expect contemporary titles such as Criminal Minds or Burn Notice though. Apps wise, there's a huge repository of applications to choose from, including Boxee's Webkit-based browser. More on the apps when we give them a spin over on the next page.
You are out of luck if mainstream movies are the only films you'd watch. For D-Link's Boxee is drenched with art house flicks and classic reels. Content on MUBI is payable, while those we've scoured through on OpenFilm are mostly free.
Social networking addicts would probably whine about the Boxee's lack of widgets for Facebook and Twitter on its Apps page. As a consolation, we did find YouTube, VEVO and reddit TV as well as a scattering of podcast apps.
Performance Matters
Apps
There are many pre-installed apps on the Boxee as mentioned, and we attempted three to see how they'd measure up. The YouTube application, in our opinion, is rather sparse based on its solitary search option with little else. For example, there are no trending categories to choose from. What's more, its random playback tendencies didn't win our vote either. Next, we checked VEVO out, and were surprised some of the music videos managed to stream through since their services are technically only available in the States and Canada. However, note that not all clips were playable, such as Britney Spears' which returned a blank screen to gawk at. We had better luck with Katy Perry's "Firework" title though. We also gave the Accuweather widget a shot, credit to the crazy weather we've been experiencing lately. This app, however, worked like a charm with detailed weather and wind conditions depicted over the next three days, as well as the option to call up a weather map.
We preferred VEVO's interface over YouTube's. Getting the VEVO clips to play, on the other hand, is very much like playing Russian roulette since not all of them are playable on the Boxee.
Accuweather's widget is one of the better implemented apps amongst the lot with its simple yet informative spread. You'll need to configure your current location, Singapore in our case, for the app to pull out the relevant weather report.
Boxee's browser could cope with embedded FLV content, although it had intermittent issues with Flash-based animation such as the advertiser's banner which failed to load at the top portion of our site. Managing the browser's pointer using the D-pad can be a trying experience as well.
Video Streaming
We tried streaming a number of short clips from OpenFilm, an online video portal for indie filmmakers. If you'd like the good news first, you might want to know that streaming is relatively smooth on our office's LAN connection with hardly any stutters or caching issues. Video and audio playback were comfortably in sync as well. As for the bad news, there was hardly a "movie" title we recognized from OpenFilm's library, though we can probably blame our non-artistic souls for that matter. One other observation is most of them were in SD resolution or less, and the Boxee wouldn't automatically scale the streamed content to fill your screen. To do so, you'll need to adjust the player's Video settings to suit your TV's native aspect ratio. Lastly, while most media players are able to display video properties such as format, CODEC and resolution, there is no such feature to be found on the Boxee. Clicking on the "Info" icon would only reveal the film's running time and brief synopsis. As you can see, the Boxee is really targeted at the mass market users rather than the tech heads.
OpenFilm's mix of quirky indie films isn't exactly Hollywood material. As a bonus, we did not encounter any streaming issues when selecting various films at random, such as the French noir film "Magic Kisa".
A screenshot of "Magic Kisa" scaled to suit our 1080p 16:9 HDTV. Notice how the aspect is slightly skewed as well, especially on the horizontal plane. Conversely, we did not experience any issues with playback if we allow the file to buffer up first.
Media Playback
Since we could not tell if the streamed content was encoded in any particular container or CODEC, here's our chance to put the Atom-based player to the test with our own video files which we're more familiar with. First up, we aimed a couple of HD (720p) files of varying bitrates and formats such as WMV, MOV and MKV at the Boxee. It rendered them well without any obvious stutters, with the exception of the RMVB extension. The Boxee also survived videos containing the Xvid and DivX CODECs without signs of syncing issues for SRT or SUB subtitle formats.
The "Files" sub-menu enables you to select and play photos, music or movie files from different platforms. For example, either from a network drive or locally connected external storage. A random screen-cap is used for the file's thumbnail as shown.
Next, we went full-monty with two MP4 and M2TS clips (1080p), encoded using the popular H.264 AVC CODEC. And we are happy to report that the Boxee coped with them easily, all, but with one caveat - the player required a second or two to resume playback after fast forwarding or rewinding tracks. Basically, the bigger the file, the longer it takes for the player to recover. On another note, while our tests were conducted over USB with an external Flash drive, we also noted that the Boxee was able to read multimedia files over the LAN network using various protocols such as TCP, DLNA, and SMB such as Samba.
Finally, the Boxee's true potential was unleashed with a 1080p test file bearing the mark of H.264 AVC on an MPEG4 format. Although its picture quality was able to match up to other media players we've assessed, the Intel CE4110-based player required a moment or two to resume playback after fast forwarding the track.
This is the guilty CODEC which purportedly caused D-Link to favor Intel's Atom solution over NVIDIA's Tegra 2. Shown here is a 1080p H.264 AVC clip on the M2TS format. By the way, this video caused quite a stir when it was first unveiled years ago for it was shot on the Canon 5D Mark II to showcase its Full-HD capabilities.
Boxing Day
Having come this far with D-Link's Boxee, we have to admit that the media cube left us with mixed feelings. It isn't simply a media tank with basic playback facilities. Fundamentally, it enables you to stream, surf, view and listen to a broad range of multimedia files on the cloud as well as those from your local and network drives. Most of all, the Boxee DSM-380 also has the same killer looks to match, even if it appears somewhat unorthodox. Not to mention it comes with 802.11n Wi-Fi perks and an extensive berth of video support, apart from RMVB which a Realtek chip could have fixed. While we respect D-Link's ambitious plans to create a omnipotent media hub, we also have to state that some of the Boxee's features felt half-baked upon experiencing them. To D-Link's credit, however, we can't blame them for every shortfall.
D-Link's funky blueprint might have raised the bar for industry players to beat, but we feel it would take a whole lot more to convince consumers to bite on the Boxee's $329 price tag. In summary, the DSM-380 is a beautiful media player and more, but might require another revision or two to perfect its interface and overall execution.
For starters, the Boxee's UI might require a bit of a learning curve with its lean yet confusing layout. For instance, it took us a while to figure out how to reach the player's configuration page. Secondly, while its dual-face remote may appear to be an interesting gadget, its implementation is far from polished given how prone we were in hitting the buttons on the flip side. At the streaming end, it isn't D-Link's fault in that there is a shortage of legal streaming sites online for the local audience in this region. On the other hand, perhaps the company should invest more time and effort at fine-tuning other aspects, such as its browser and its erratic Flash-support. To sum it up, while the Boxee sure looks fine based its paper promises, but its real-world experience is less than perfect. It certainly has an interesting design and implementation, but sum of the quirks we've noticed negated part of the benefits.
All in all, it'll be hard for D-Link to justify its price point against the ranks of cheaper and equivalently functional network-ready media tanks, but it's probably the next best thing to a real smart TV in your living room.
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